The Latest Bounce

The tide may be turning in
California’s fight to keep drill rigs away from its
shores (HCN, 6/23/03: Will offshore be off-limits?). On Aug. 11,
the nine members of the California Coastal Commission unanimously
rejected the federal government’s attempts to renew 36 oil
and gas leases off the Southern California coast. Two days later, a
federal judge also blocked the lease-renewal effort, saying that
the Interior Department did not adequately analyze the
environmental impacts of drilling the leases.

The federal
government continues to search for a winning
number in Nevada. Last summer, a federal appeals court
ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency’s 10,000-year
standard for radiation exposure at the proposed Yucca Mountain
nuclear waste dump was too short (HCN, 8/16/04: Court says Yucca
Mountain design unsafe). In response, the EPA proposed a new,
two-stage regulation this August: It will keep its original
standard in place for the first 10,000 years, and then, for the
next million years, raise the limit to a standard allowing 23 times
as much radiation.

Don’t want to play
nice? It’s gonna cost you. Last year, developer
Irving Okovita sued three U.S. Forest Service employees and an
environmentalist under a federal racketeering law after a court
stopped his planned development on the shore of Big Bear Lake in
Southern California (HCN, 3/7/05: Forest Service employees and
activist face racketeering charges). A federal judge tossed out the
conspiracy case this spring, and on Aug. 15, he ruled that the two
attorneys who represented Okovita owe the defendants’ legal
fees and costs, totaling more than a quarter-million dollars.

And if you really don’t play nice, you
might just lose the farm … er, ranch. In 2003,
Casey Nethercott, an Arizona rancher and member of Ranch Rescue, a
citizens’ wannabe border patrol, allegedly pistol-whipped
illegal El Salvadoran immigrant Edwin Alfredo Mancía
Gonzáles on the Texas-Mexico line. Mancía and another
immigrant subsequently sued for civil damages. Now, Nethercott will
surrender his 70-acre ranch to the El Salvadorans as part of the
judgment against him (HCN, 10/9/00: The hunters and the hunted: The
Arizona-Mexico border turns into the 21st century
frontier).